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Filling the sails

Julie Machado from Auckland, New Zealand

The Gum Nebula is the largest emission nebula by apparent size, spanning 36° of the southern sky across the constellations Vela the Sails and Puppis the Stern. It lies here above the mountains in Coromandel, New Zealand. The imager used a Sony a7 IV mirrorless camera and 85mm lens to capture the sky in four panels, each a stack of three 75-second exposures at f/2.5 and ISO 2000 with a diffuser filter and two 180-second exposures at f/1.8 and ISO 2000 with an Hα filter. The foreground comprises 3 panels of 180-second exposures at f/2 and ISO 1600.

December 2025

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